James Moore Wayne

“ The court's construction of the rights of the parties under the act should have been independent of the question of fraud. The evidence which it allowed to be given of it was inadmissible, and the finding of the jury is of no weight in the case. Fraud, as it is sometimes said, 'vitiates every act'-correctly, too, when properly applied to the subject-matter in controversy, and to the parties in it, and in a proper forum. For instance, as when one of them charges the other with an actual fraud ”

“ The intention of the Legislature is without doubt, and we cannot make it otherwise by supposing any condition than those expressed in the act; and we also think that the registry of an alcalde's grant, in the manner and within the time mentioned in the act, is essential to its confirmation under the act. In this particular, the Kearney grant, under which the plaintiff claimed, was deficient, and so the court should have instructed the jury upon the prayer of the defendant, without the qualification that the entry made of it in the district records was a registry within the meaning of the act. ”

“ The defendant in error brought into the Circuit Court an action of ejectment against Wyman and others, tenants of the plaintiff in error, to recover the possession of lot No. 464, it being a subdivision of a lot of one hundred varas square, numbered 456, of the San Francisco beach and water lots. Field, the plaintiff in error, was admitted to defend, and a verdict having been given for the plaintiffs below, it was agreed by a stipulation in the record that this writ of error should be prosecuted by Field alone, without joining the other defendants. ”